LOS GATOS, Calif. – A bus, filled with journalists from around the world, pulls into a parking lot surrounded by low-rise Spanish-style buildings. It almost feels like a resort here, as people eat their lunches near decorative fountains, with the Santa Cruz Mountains serving as a backdrop.

This is Netflix headquarters, located about an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, where 1,300 employees are currently trying to help the streaming company prepare for its global plan – expanding from 50 countries to 200 by the end of 2016.

Cliff Edwards, Netflix’s director of corporate and technology communications, adjusts his blue suit as he leads journalists into the B building, passing by posters for Netflix titles like Sense8, Marvel’s Daredevil and Orange is the New Black.

A lot of the employee perks at Netflix’s Los Gatos campus feel typical to those at most Silicon Valley companies, says Edwards. For example, employees can eat lunch for free at 11 a.m. each day.

“It’s funny – people are trained to actually get to the cafeteria at 11,” Edwards says with a laugh. “It’s like a mass migration, like the march of the penguins, where we all come down at 11 and grab our lunch, and then go back to work.”

The lunch is just the beginning – employees also get access to free breakfast, afternoon popcorn, a car borrowing service and an extremely flexible vacation policy. Here are some other behind-the-scenes tidbits that Postmedia Network learned during a recent tour of Netflix headquarters:

1. Many of the meeting rooms have quirky entertainment-related names. So, as an employee, you might receive invites for meetings at places like Edward Scissorhands, The Shining, Cheers, Happy Days, Army of Darkness or Casablanca. Need to use the bathroom? Those have eccentric titles, too, named after famous male and female actors.

2. While vending machines at most companies include chips, chocolate and pretzels, things at Netflix operate a little differently. In each building, you can find a vending machine filled with techy goodies, like USB keys, cables, batteries and other accessories. And everything is free. “You can see the prices on here,” says Edwards, pointing to the different items. “But that’s just telling you, ‘This is what it costs, so don’t go crazy.’”

3. Every new employee has to participate in a dance performance. During company meetings each quarter, new workers perform routines based on recent Netflix Originals, like Hemlock Grove or Marvel’s Daredevil. “It’s very elaborate,” says Edwards with a laugh. “There’s a choreographer who comes in and actually spends weeks at a time making you learn the dance numbers.”

4. The House of Cards Season 3 leak wasn’t a PR stunt, says Edwards. In February, all 13 episodes became available two weeks before the season’s launch, with users able to access the new episodes for about 20 minutes, before Netflix removed them. “We reacted very quickly,” says Edwards, thinking back to the 19 minutes it took for the company to organize a global call, take down the episodes and issue a statement. He says that Netflix turned the negative situation into a positive, because the leak ended up building heavy social media buzz for House of Cards. “And the engineer who tripped the release is still working here. At a lot of other companies, the guy would have quickly been shown the door.”

5. There’s a lot of research that goes into selecting box art. And Todd Yellin, Netflix’s VP of product innovation, says that some of us may have already been in an image selection test – without even knowing it. When Netflix Originals are released, Yellin’s team will test various pictures for different groups of users to see which one generates the most clicks. For example, should an Orange is the New Black image feature just Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), or multiple cast members? “The image is super important,” says Yellin. “It can move the streaming of these titles by 10 or 20%.”

6. The company has been developing a Netflix Recommended TV program, where analysts give TVs a special designation to show customers that the product responds well to Netflix’s user interface. “We’re trying to shine a light on an area that’s important to customers – how well does it work for Internet TV?” says Brady Gunderson, Netflix’s director of product development. One of the most important features is the idea of ‘Instant-On’, where users can turn on their TVs and resume what they were doing before – similar to how smartphones and tablets behave. Gunderson and his team test TVs in a creepy room called The Shu, which neutralizes any signals from the outside. “There’s no phone service or anything here,” says Gunderson with a grin, gesturing to the white padded walls. “No one can hear you scream.”